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MEMBER DIARY

FISA Courts

I got bored last night and sat down to read FISA and the FISA Amendments of 2008. One thing that struck me. The law disallows a warrant by the FISA court if both communicants are in the USA. That’s right, one of the people in communication has to be out-of-country. The law also requires that the warrant be for a specified person.

So how Is it that these open ended, non-specified warrants are being issued. In country communications are being grabbed of all users of these different services. Looking at the fact that .03% of warrant requests are refused and the rest just rubber stamped comes to mind.

Then I heard the interview conducted with Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner (the author of FISA). In it he claimed that the judges were inappropriately approving the warrant requests, not inline with the original intent of the law.

So not only are they spying on huge amounts of Americans, but they are doing it illegally, with the blessing of the FISA judges.

This is a program that needs to be scrapped or completely overhauled. A single judge is not enough and obviously these judges need to be educated on the content of the law.